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‘Mad Men’ Versus Domesticity

October 21, 2010 3:28 pmOctober 21, 2010 3:28 pm

Two of the most interesting things written about the current season of “Mad Men” (now sadly complete) both appeared on New York Magazine’s “Vulture” blog earlier this month. One was Emily Nussbaum’s provocative piece wondering (as her title put it) why the show’s writers “make Betty Draper such a monster.” The other was this passage, from Logan Hill’s recap of the season’s 11th episode:

The one moment where the plot machinery seemed to pause was that awful, crass funeral of ad-man David Montgomery. Who knows if his name is a nod to one of America’s greatest labor historians, the Yale new-labor legend David Montgomery, but it would be a fitting tribute if so, since the funeral was a kind of sick joke about capitalism. As the boys scouted out vulnerable accounts, the eulogists offered up the only stories they could about the ad-man Montgomery: work tales. Each was supposed to be heartwarming because Mr. Montgomery would take a break from his faraway work (which sounded dull and empty) to buy something tiny, like a thimble, for his daughter or wife. The image couldn’t be more direct: After work had taken all of this man’s life, his blank-faced daughter and widow were left with just a thimbleful of his time …

… There are a whole lot of historians and sociologists, like David Montgomery (or Christopher Lasch, whose Haven in a Heartless World: The Family Besieged seems especially pertinent to this episode) who might be frustrated by the way a lot of the period arguments we fans have had about Mad Men — in terms of women in the office and work-life balance, and gender roles and so forth — tend to occlude the macro-level changes in the ways Americans work. We talk about how Betty’s a bad parent, and Don’s a bad parent, but rarely about how the way work — and, particularly, this kind of obsessive Manhattan work world — is eclipsing all other sorts of power and order, requiring and overtaking more and more of people’s values and lives. When, at a funeral, there’s more talk of money than religion, more talk of work trips than the journey to the afterlife, the show’s making a point.

I agree — but I also think that the theme Hill identifies is undercut, almost at every turn, by the fact that the show’s definitive portrait of domestic life involves the horrifying ex-Mrs. Draper. (I loved Nussbaum’s description of her as “a hissable Barbie with the most cake.”) Matthew Weiner clearly wants to complicate his glamorization of Madison Avenue with nods to the darker side of capitalism and the all-devouring power of work, and “Mad Men” has relied on Don Draper’s palpable yearning for domesticity — running from his famous Carousel monologue in the first season to his impulsive decision to marry his secretary in this week’s season finale — as a way to generate sympathy for a frequently-unsympathetic protagonist. But it’s a yearning that seems to stand no chance of being satisfied, because the show doesn’t present any actual models for human happiness outside of the workplace — and indeed, often makes life outside of work look like a special sort of hell.

It isn’t just Betty Draper, monster mom. With the arguable exception of Pete and Trudie Campbell’s marriage, the domestic sphere on “Mad Men” is all misery: It’s the land of Joan Holloway’s rapist husband, Peggy Olson’s provincial mother and resentful sister, Pete’s spendthrift father, Roger Sterling’s failed first marriage and not-obviously-happy second, Lane Pryce’s America-hating wife, and so on. For all the recurring gestures toward a critique of lives lived entirely at the grindstone, it’s the office, not the home, that’s ultimately portrayed as the real haven in a heartless world. In this regard, the essential “Mad Men” moment isn’t David Montgomery’s depressing funeral; it’s the scene from a few episodes earlier when Peggy decides to dump her unpleasant, squarer-than-square boyfriend in order to spend the night having a meaningful encounter with the more important person in her life: Her boss, Don Draper.

This means that “Mad Men” moments like the funeral scene that Hill discusses — or the scene in the finale when Ken Cosgrove refuses to lean on his father-in-law to drum up new accounts, because (he says, a little heavy-handedly) “every account I have will eventually leave me,” whereas family is forever — seem to me to fall a little flat. They’re attempts to make the show’s gleaming workplace appear a little less glamorous and a little more soul-sucking, and they hint, as Hill suggests, at a kind of Laschian critique of modern American capitalism. But all of these hints are overwhelmed by the show’s hostile treatment of actual domesticity. Accounts and ad agencies may not last forever, but their consolations have far, far more appeal than the nightmare of a home life with Betty Draper.

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Ross Douthat joined The New York Times as an Op-Ed columnist in April 2009. Previously, he was a senior editor at the Atlantic and a blogger for theatlantic.com. He is the author of "Privilege: Harvard and the Education of the Ruling Class" (Hyperion, 2005) and the co-author, with Reihan Salam, of "Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream" (Doubleday, 2008). He is the film critic for National Review.